Torch Read Free Page B

refused.”
    “How come you’d accept a case like that?”
    “Donna Winship was a friend of a friend who was worried about her.”
    “Good friend?”
    “To both of us.”
    “What’s this good friend’s name?”
    Carver gave him Beth Jackson’s name, then the address he wanted to give him.
    “That’s your address,” Belquest said.
    “I told you she was a good friend.”
    Belquest thanked him for his statement but didn’t seem quite satisfied. He switched the tape to rewind, and Carver thought he was about to ask him some questions off the record.
    Instead he said, “Jesus! Damned things are killing me by inches, but I gotta have a smoke!” He flung open the car door and climbed out into the greater heat, his hand already fumbling at his pocket that held the cigarettes.
    Carver thought about the gulls again, like fragments of a soul taking to heaven.

3
    R ILEY’S C LAM S HOP was as much a bar as a restaurant, so it was doing a boisterous and profitable business at ten that night. Carver parked his ancient Olds convertible at the far end of the lot, near a row of gracefully bent palm trees. He had the car’s top down, and the deep bass beat of the music wafting from Riley’s was loud enough for him to feel it in the pit of his stomach.
    The restaurant was on Vista Road, about five blocks from the ocean. On the coast, Vista ended at Magellan, about half a mile north of where Carver’s office was located, on the same street. Riley’s looked as if it were built out of odd pieces of driftwood that had washed up on the beach; there was a time not so long ago when that kind of cutesy architecture was popular in coastal Florida, especially in tourist areas. Keeping to the nautical theme, a pierlike plank walkway led to the entrance, flanked by subdued lights concealed in dense and flowery shrubbery. On the gray-weathered wood above the door was mounted what looked like a real anchor.
    Several men and two women were lounging outside the entrance, near what appeared to be a ship’s watch bell and a large, spoked wooden wheel that might have been used to steer a Spanish galleon. The women wore tight jeans and loose blouses. Some of the men wore casual slacks and sport shirts, some had on jackets and ties. One of the men, wearing a jacket and brightly flowered tie, was doing an animated dance in time to the music, trying to impress the women, who looked bored. The taller of the two women, a slender brunette, crossed her arms and turned away as if trying to put the whole thing out of her mind.
    Carver climbed out of the car and crossed the moonlit lot, the shadows of the breeze-tossed palm trees dancing at his feet. The brunette with her arms crossed glanced at him, then leaned with her shoulder against the thick post supporting the ship’s bell. She smiled, uncrossed her arms, and gave the spoked wooden wheel a turn, as if it were a wheel on a TV game show allowing her to choose a vowel. Carver doubted if she’d ever been to sea.
    Inside the restaurant the music was deafening, provided by a five-piece all-female band featuring a shiny and complicated electric keyboard. Carver sat at the bar and lip-synched to the bartender that he wanted a draft beer.
    He sat sipping his beer from its frosted mug and trying not to listen to the music for a few minutes, looking over the crowded restaurant. All the tables were occupied by at least two people. There were half a dozen or so men seated or standing at the long bar who might be by themselves. A sign over the door advertised that there would be a bikini contest next Friday, Jello wrestling the Friday after that. Carver saw no reason why the two events shouldn’t be combined.
    Carrying his beer, he went outside and across wooden planks to a public phone he’d noticed mounted on a corner of the building. The brunette near the ship’s bell smiled at him again. He was about to phone Beth, so he didn’t smile back, but he raised his stein in a kind of salute to her and all